All right...I'll throw together a list of underrated albums as in not on the top 3000 period.

How about a definition of underrated which relates the AM position to their approximate position on your personal list. For example, if there is a difference of more than 250 (or 500, or 1000) between the AM rank and your personal rank, it can be considered underrated. This will exclude everything in the top 250 (or 500, or 1000), but I think it's fair to say those albums aren't really underrated.

I agree with the numerical idea in general, but I think there are some albums critics have picked up on but don't get included with the canon by music fans.

One example for me would be, The Modern Dance. #226 on AM, #28 on my personal list. Shouldn't I include that over something that's #2000 on AM and #1000 on my personal list?

Percentual maybe? The AM rank has to be, for example, 200% of your personal ranking. However, this would allow you to include Revolver if it is your #1 album, so percentual combined with numerical is better. The AM rank has to be 200% of your personal ranking and there have to be at least 100 ranks in between.

First, why such strict definitions? Underrated is more of a feeling anyway, isn't it?

And a difference of 250/500/1000? My personal list ends at 100. I don't rank a 1000 albums.

Does evereybody here have a top 500 or 1000 readily available? I thought I was a listmaniac...

By the way... Nice idea!

Just a thought, but how about a shifting scale rather than percentage?
For example, if an album is in your personal top 10 but not AM's top 100 it's underrated. You could use a scale based on this:

Personal rank / AM rank
1-10 / Lower than 100
11-50 / Lower than 200
51-100 / Lower than 500
101-200 / Lower than 1,000
201-500 / Lower than 2,000

P.S. An overrated poll might be a fun followup.

That sounds better and a lot less convoluted Rocky, and it also solves Gillingham's problem. To answer your question Gill, I have 350ish albums ranked and 600ish songs.

My ranking program has almost 600 albums loaded into it. But, around 300 is the point where really good new albums are likely to reach, so it's only good up to there.

Mediocre is a little harsh. To me, it's like an 8.8 that gets ranked above 5-7 albums that are 10s. I'm a huge Neil Young fan.

However, I still consider Out of Time ridiculously overrated.

As for personal ranking vs. actual ranking:

Summerteeth is my #8 of all time.
On The Beach is my #11 of all time.

so even though those are fairly acclaimed albums, I consider them vastly underrated.

I agree the AM list shouldn't be the only basis for underrated because it's only a list of critical ratings, but I think excluding the entire list is going a little far.

I also think that if an album isn't placed highly because nobody has heard it, it qualifies as 'Underrated'.

It might be a good idea to have a poll of 'best albums excluded completely from the AM list', but that's a different poll from 'underrated'. That poll will include a lot of albums that sold ten million copies and exclude a lot of brilliant unknown albums that made it onto the list just based on a handful of high placements.

Maybe instead of worrying about particular lists or particular numbers, we should be discussing 'Underrated by whom?' Underrated by critics? By mainstream audiences? By enthusiasts of it's particular genre? By audiophiles?

Some good suggestions, and I'm sure Stephan will take them under advisement. It's his poll, though, he's doing the work. So anyway he wants to run it is cool with me. If I don't like it, I just won't participate. Unlike a recent trend on these new poll discussions, I'm more for simple and less convoluted.

Nice discussion you've started there, Henrik.

Underrated and overrated are both pretty much subjective opinions, because they need to be comparisons to some chosen standard. The question is, which standard? AM, RYM, your favorite local radio station or some music magazine, your mummy's opinion? This is the AM forum, so this obscure game might as well take the AM top 3000 as the standard. The majority of the 3000 albums are quite nice to listen to, I'd say ...

I like Rocky's shifting scale, in my opinion it could even be more agressive, like e.g.
personal rank --- AM rank
1-10 --- Lower than 100
11-50 --- Lower than 1000
51-100 --- Not in AM 3000

With this scale, everyone should still be able to list at least 25 albums (nobody is that mainstream, or could that be?). Surely, Moonbeam and nj are happy to send in the major part - >75? - of their favorite 100 ...

Points could be given to the "severity" of the underrating, like e.g.

points --- personal rank --- AM rank
5 --- 1-10 --- Not in AM 3000
3 --- 1-10 --- 1001-3000
3 --- 11-50 --- Not in AM 3000
1 --- 1-10 --- 101-1000
1 --- 11-50 --- 1001-3000
1 --- 51-100 --- Not in AM 3000

And the participant can give up to max. 50 points in total (which, for instance, would be the case if someone's entire personal top 10 lies outside the AM top 3000).

Too complicated?

Time to get back to this great idea for a poll. Like Rocky I'm not the biggest fan of the more convoluted point systems we've been devising so I'm not going to have people assign points. The lists are supposed to be of which albums you find the most overrated. Simply using the formula we always do will mean that #1 gets more points than #100; this means you might not want to just filter your personal top albums for the criteria because some albums lower down your list might be more underrated than the ones near the top. I do agree with Andre that it could be a little more 'aggressive'. I'm thinking this:
1-10 / Lower than 250
11-50 / Lower than 500
51-100 / Lower than 1,000
101-200 / Lower than 2,000
201-500 / Outside the AM top 3,000

Now, the second-most important issue, when to start? I'm going to start traveling during June, so if we want to do this soon it'll have to be voting during April and revealing during May. This doesn't leave a whole lot of time, so perhaps we can take two months for voting (May and June) and I will reveal the results in July. We could also just vote in June, but I'd like to listen to some recommendations myself, which is why I'm suggesting including May.

Any thoughts or comments on either the points or the dates?

I like this point system. If anything, I would exclude the top 500 entirely. Forum favorites like Odessey and Oracle and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea would be eligible with those values. I do prefer the straight list option to points in this poll.

But shouldn't those albums top a poll like this? They're forum favorites for a reason. If we exclude the 250-500 we'll exclude a lot of albums I do think are underrated. Of course 250 is just as arbitrary a cut-off point, so if more people feel 500 is better we'll go with that.

I don't know. Odyssey and Oracle and Aeroplane may not be up at the top of the AM list, but they're very popular among indie communities. They're not just forum favorites here, they're forum favorites at most similar forums, so I have a hard time calling them 'Underrated'. We can't really define an album's rating strictly by the AM position. An album that's ranked in the 600s and sold 5000 copies, in my opinion, should be considered far more underrated than an album that's off the list and sold 15 million copies.

The #3000 album on AM is only on five lists, two of which are catch-all lists like AMG. Wide appreciation to me says a lot more about an album's 'rating' than love from the handful of critics it takes to get on the list.

I think polls should be straightforward from the outside but convoluted from the inside. That way it's easy to participate, but you can tweak the method to target the statistical trends the poll is most interested in.

this, Chris.

Reckoning: #617
Fables Of The Reconstruction: #991
Life's Rich Pageant: #703
Green: #627
Monster: #1256
New Adventures in Hi-Fi: #917
Up: #1284
Accelerate: #2320

(fig. 8, right next to Smith, Elliott)


boyyy... this poll looks doomed from the get:go

That is beyond my statistical abilities though. Like I said, I'm willing to run this poll, but I don't want to have to look up the sales of hundred of albums to determine whether they should get more or less points. Feel free to supply me with a formula that doesn't require too much work on my part though.

easy cheat code sez: vaporis.ze the big names off the list... if we only knew (read=agree on) who's big and who's not

For sure,this is one of the great lost albums of all time. Look how many 5 star ratings it has:
http://www.amazon.com/California-Dreams-Various-Artists/dp/B000002OMX

Okay, I know this isn't following the format, but Viguen, the Blur apologist, must strike again...

Modern Life is Rubbish, Blur, and 13 should all be in the top 500 as far as I'm concerned.

Stephan, I'm with you on both points system and dates (May - June).

Hopefully the number of album sales will not be considered. Rating albums is about quality, not about dollars.

There has to be a way though to consider popularity among music fans instead of just among critics. RYM?

On RYM, Aeroplane is #64, Odyssey and Oracle is #56.

New name: Most underrated by critics poll.

That seems like it could work. To keep it simple, we can do something like this:
1-10 / Lower than 250 on AM and RYM
11-50 / Lower than 500 on AM and RYM
51-100 / Lower than 1,000 on AM and RYM
101-200 / Lower than 2,000 on AM and RYM
201-500 / Lower than 3,000 on AM and RYM

This will exclude Odyssey, Aeroplane, On The Beach, etc. and give us a real underrated list without using overly complicated formulas.

One slight little quibble- RYM updates its charts every month or so, so the boundaries may change depending on when we make our ballot.

Good point. I'm not that familiar with RYM; is there some way to get a simple list of as many albums as possible?

The most underrated album of all time is...

The Left Banke - Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina

It's jammed full of should-be-classic tunes and not even in the AM top 3000.

This will definitely also be in my top 10 of underrated albums. Beautifully arranged baroque pop with some seriously catchy harmonies. It deserves much more appreciation.

Has this become an actual poll yet, or it is still being crafted?

Still crafting. In any case, it won't start until May. That doesn't mean you can't start making your lists in April, of course.